A Dead Man Out of Mind (26 page)

‘That's right. I'm so sorry to bother you, Dr Bright. I'm Lucy Kingsley, and Vera is expecting me.'

‘Well, you'd better come in then, hadn't you?' The old man stepped aside to let her in. ‘I don't know where the damnfool girl has got to, though.'

‘She said that she was going to do some gardening,' Lucy suggested. ‘Perhaps she's out in the back and didn't hear the bell.'

‘I was taking my nap. I always have a nap in the mornings, and then Vera brings me my coffee.'

‘I'm so sorry to have disturbed your nap,' Lucy apologised again.

The old man grinned. ‘I don't mind being disturbed by someone as pretty as you.' Walter Bright's eyes dropped to Lucy's chest and seemed fixated there. Embarrassed, Lucy spared a moment of empathetic pity for generations of his women patients. She was not to know that during his many years of practice, Dr Bright had been the model of rectitude and upright behaviour; it was only in his dotage that he had begun to ogle young women, to his daughter's immense mortification.

‘Should we look for her in the garden?' Lucy suggested.

‘I'll go. You stay here.' He tore his eyes away from her chest and shuffled off towards the back of the house.

His shriek, a moment later, was unearthly in quality, a banshee's wail that struck Lucy to the bone with intuitive terror. Without any volition or conscious thought she followed the sound, and found herself standing next to the old man in the kitchen. Out of some primitive instinct of self-preservation, her eyes looked everywhere but in the direction of the old man's trembling finger. In some corner of her brain she took in the cheery sprigged wallpaper, the angle of the sun streaming through the window on to the counter, the serviceable brown coffee mugs – three in number – set on a tray near the old-fashioned metallic electric kettle along with a plate of biscuits, the two identical brown mugs on the draining board, the muddy-fingered gardening gloves thrown carelessly on the table, the open door into the garden. Then she could avoid it no longer; her eyes followed his finger.

It was a strangely peaceful sight, with no blood and no signs of violence, but it was all the more horrible for that. Vera Bright was sitting in a chair, slumped over the table. One thin arm was flung across the table, palm up, in a beseeching gesture. And over her head was a green plastic bag with an unmistakeable gold logo, tied round her neck with a piece of garden twine.

Somehow Lucy managed to do the right things. She removed the old man from the kitchen, rang the police, told them the facts in a concise manner, then calmed Dr Bright down with a mug of strong, sweet tea, being careful while making it not to touch anything that might be important.

Ensconced in his customary armchair in the sitting room with his tea, the old man talked incessantly and seemingly at random as they waited for the police to arrive. ‘It's the bag I don't understand,' he said over and over. ‘My Vera didn't give herself airs. She never set foot in a shop like that in her life. She wasn't that kind of girl. But who would have done such a thing? To my Vera? She may have been useless, that girl, but she never hurt a fly. Who would want to harm her?' He wrapped his arms around himself and rocked back and forth. ‘And what am I going to do without her? I'm not going into some home, where they'll tie me down and leave me to die. I don't understand about the bag. Why would anyone want to hurt Vera?' He repeated it over and over, in various permutations, like some kind of litany of misery. Lucy let him talk, realising that he wasn't really asking for answers.

The police arrived, a uniformed PC first and then a number of plainclothes officers and the police doctor. Lucy could hear them in the kitchen, going about their choreographed routine, but she blocked out any conscious speculation about what they were doing. For some little while they left her alone with the old man, who continued to ramble in the same vein. After a time, though, a neatly-dressed man with kind dark eyes and a large square jaw joined them in the sitting room and introduced himself. ‘I'm Inspector Shepherd.' He looked at Lucy expectantly.

In a few words she told him who she was and why she was there, then indicated Dr Bright. ‘This is Miss Bright's father. I'm afraid he's a bit incoherent at the moment – as you can imagine, Inspector, this has been a great shock for him.'

The policeman leaned over and addressed the old man. ‘I'm very sorry about your daughter, sir.'

‘Oh, my poor Vera. She was a good girl. Careful with her money. Not like some of these young things who go off shopping all the time. She never was like that, my Vera. Never been inside that shop in her life. And why should she be?' The last was said on a belligerent note.

‘No reason at all, sir,' said the policeman soothingly; he was used to dealing with people in shock, and the irrelevant things they often said. He turned back to Lucy. ‘He found her, did he?'

She nodded. ‘But I was right behind him. I'm sure he didn't touch anything. And I tried not to disturb anything either, though I didn't think it would hurt if I made a pot of tea. I thought he could use it.'

‘No problem. We'll need to take your fingerprints, of course. And his as well, just for purposes of elimination.' He took out his notebook. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, Miss Kingsley?'

‘Not at all.'

‘Did anything in the kitchen look out of place, or unusual?'

Regretfully she shook her head. ‘I'm afraid I can't really help you. This is the first time I've been here, so I wouldn't know.'

‘So you also wouldn't know if anything in the house were missing?'

‘No. Sorry. You'll have to ask Dr Bright.'

The policeman looked at the old man without much hope. ‘Sir,' he said, ‘it looks like your daughter might have surprised a burglar. At some point, when you're feeling like it, I'd like you to have a look round and tell me if anything is missing. Silver, jewellery, appliances like video recorders or tellies.'

Walter Bright gestured scornfully at the box across from him. ‘There's the television. Still there. No modern do-dads like video recorders in this house. And none of that other rot – I told you, my Vera was a simple girl.' He fixed the policeman with a belligerent glare. ‘Don't you dare say otherwise. She might have been useless, but at least she was no spendthrift.'

Hastily Inspector Shepherd turned back to Lucy. ‘You'll be wanting to get on, I expect. I don't think there's anything else we need from you at the moment. If you'll just let me know how we can get in touch with you, if necessary . . .'

‘Dr Bright shouldn't be left alone,' she protested. ‘He's very upset.'

‘Don't worry about him – I'll get a WPC to sit with him,' the policeman assured her.

‘Yes, just go off and leave me. Just like my Vera,' moaned the old man. ‘How could she desert me like this? All alone. I'm all alone.'

Suddenly the horror of the situation – and the reality of it – descended on Lucy like a black curtain; she put her hands over her face and sobbed. ‘I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't be like this. But it's just so . . . awful. Poor Vera.'

The policeman, who had seen far too many scenes like this, let her cry for a moment. ‘Do you have a car, Miss Kingsley, or can we take you somewhere? I know that this has been upsetting for you.'

After a time Lucy regained control and lifted her chin. ‘I'll be all right. If I could just use the phone and ring someone to collect me . . . ?'

‘Yes, of course.'

Fortunately the phone was in the hall rather than in the kitchen. It was the old-fashioned sort with a dial; somehow she forced her fingers to push the dial around.

‘Fosdyke, Fosdyke and Galloway,' announced a solemn female voice. ‘May I help you?'

Lucy's voice sounded remarkably calm. ‘Mr Middleton-Brown, please.'

‘I'm sorry, but Mr Middleton-Brown is not in his office. Would you like to speak to his secretary, or can someone else help you?'

She took a deep breath as she felt the panic rising again. ‘No, thank you. But if you could tell him that Lucy rang . . .'

The receptionist did not feel that conveying personal messages was part of her job. ‘Very well,' she said repressively. ‘I'll tell him.'

Putting the phone down, Lucy leaned her head against the wall and thought about what to do next. Emily, she decided gratefully. Emily would come for her. She dialled again.

‘I'll be there in a few minutes,' Emily promised, when she'd had a brief outline of what had happened. ‘Just hang on, Luce.'

‘Thanks, Em.'

Before she left, Lucy had her fingerprints taken, efficiently and without fuss, then returned to the sitting room to say goodbye to the old man. She took his hand and leaned over him. ‘I'm going soon, Dr Bright. But I'm sure they'll take good care of you.'

He raised his eyes, glanced over at the placid form of the WPC on the sofa, then beckoned Lucy closer. She bent down, and he cupped his hand over her ear to whisper, ‘Those damned police don't believe me. They think I'm daft. But I know it was no burglar that killed my Vera. She would never go to that shop. And what about those two cups on the draining board? How do they explain those, hey?' For an instant the belligerence left him and his eyes were those of a vulnerable, pleading old man. ‘Please,' he said softly. ‘You're a good girl. Please find out who killed my Vera. Don't let them get away with it.'

CHAPTER 23

    
Their priests were slain with the sword: and there were no widows to make lamentation.

Psalm 78.65

Monday morning seemed to go very slowly for David. Ruth was being more than usually stroppy with him, causing him to reflect that five days was after all a very long time – time enough for God to create a fair chunk of the world. And hanging over the sunny morning like a black cloud was the prospect of his visit to Robin West. Having made up his mind of the necessity to interview the sacristan, he had determined to do it straightaway – that very lunchtime, in fact. It would be less suspicious – and undoubtedly safer – to meet him at his restaurant, as if by accident, and to have an informal chat. After all, he
had
been invited to stop by for a drink. He was sure that West would take his visit at face value, and that with the sacristan's penchant for gossip, there would be no difficulty in getting him to talk.

First, though, he wanted to ring Martin Bairstow. The younger churchwarden, ruthless in his business dealings and temperamentally suited to eliminating his opponents, seemed to David to be the most logical suspect, though a clear-cut motive eluded him. Perhaps it was as Gabriel had suggested, and Rachel had found out what the wardens had hoped to accomplish by the sale of the church's silver. Was there any way that the two of them could collude to skim off some of the money? But Bairstow didn't seem in any need of money, so there must be something else in the equation that David didn't know about.

Consulting his files for the number, he rang Bairstow's office. ‘I'm sorry,' said his secretary, ‘but Mr Bairstow isn't in at the moment. I expect him back at any time – can I have him return your call?'

‘It's not urgent,' David said, but he gave his name and number to the secretary, and towards the end of the morning Mrs Simmons put through a call from the churchwarden.

‘How can I help you, Mr Middleton-Brown?' Bairstow sounded slightly more brusque than usual.

David adopted an apologetic tone. ‘I don't know how you feel about this,' he said, ‘but if you're still interested in selling some of your silver, the Archdeacon has indicated to me that he would support the sale of one of the ciboria to the V and A. A privately negotiated sale, to keep it in the national collection. I realise that's far short of what you originally had in mind, but it would still bring in a tidy sum. Fifteen or twenty thousand, at a guess.'

There was a pause on the other end. ‘I'll have to think about it,' was the eventual cautious reply. ‘And speak to Norman Topping and Father Keble Smythe, of course. Can I get back to you in a few days?'

‘I thought that perhaps we might meet to discuss it. At St Margaret's, if that's more convenient for you.'

Bairstow, who had seen his share of inflated solicitors' bills, wasn't so easily convinced. ‘I'll get back to you as soon as I can,' he repeated. ‘By the end of the week, if possible.'

David had to be satisfied with that. ‘Very well, Mr Bairstow. I'll look forward to hearing from you.'

He looked at his watch; it was getting on for lunchtime. Realising that there was at least one advantage to his visit to
La Reine Dorée
, he went out to Mrs Simmons's desk to ask her if she'd mind very much taking Ruth to lunch with her, as he had an urgent lunchtime meeting.

Having been subjected to Ruth for the last fortnight, Mrs Simmons inevitably
did
mind very much, but she couldn't very well say so. ‘No problem at all, Mr Middleton-Brown,' she replied bravely.

Good woman, he said to himself, resolving to pick up some flowers for her on his way back from lunch.

La Reine Dorée
was located in South Kensington, not far from the tube station but in the opposite direction from Lucy's house. It was much as David had expected it to be: rather dimly lit, its walls adorned with a mixture of old French cigarette posters and framed black-and-white glossy photos of 1930s' screen goddesses, and patronised by a glittering array of decorative young people exemplifying various permutations of sexual preference but with a predominance of men.

Robin West, who was leaning in a cultivatedly insouciant pose near the door, stood to attention when he spotted David's entrance. ‘My dear chap!' he beamed, putting out both hands. ‘So you've finally come! I knew that you wouldn't be able to stay away for ever.' He gave David an exaggerated wink. ‘Where's the girlfriend?'